A journey down the rabbit hole of Rubik's-style puzzles

I wrote last week in Part 1 of this post about hacking, so to speak, a Ghosthand Crystal Cube. As detailed in that post, I wired past the motion sensor and on-board IC that caused the irritating and impractical blinking. That forced the cube into a constant-on state once I connected two leads that I had temporarily extended through the core for testing.

As described below, I solved that problem with a switch inside the core that could be reached with a paper clip. Here is a video of the final result, showing the cube powering on/off and a sample solve in the pitch dark. It’s not a speed-cube, and it is prone to pops and lock-ups, so I solved at a casual 55-second pace.

Of the handful of micro switches I purchased, I had assumed I’d use the micro latching tact switch, undermounting it through a pre-formed hole in the core. As you’ll see in the pictures below, I started down this path before realizing that the switch was too large and that it was hard to keep it mounted once pressure was placed on it from the outside.

undermounted push-button switch

push-button switch

core w/ micro slide switch

slide switch close-up

switch access

Scrapping that idea, I moved to a micro slide switch that fit neatly beneath another pre-formed hole in the core — just beneath the blue/yellow edge piece. Voila. Worked perfectly. I had hoped to be able to reach the switch by forcing a paper clip between the pieces. But, as it turns out, that slot is completely blocked by the pieces. So, I need to remove the blue/yellow edge to access the slot. No biggie.

This was a fun project, with great results. Another first-world problem solved!?!